She slips through the misty alleys of London’s memory like a whispered scandal — Elizabeth Cresswell, known in her time as Madam Cresswell, courtesan-entrepreneur, political underworld broker, and lightning rod for moral outrage. To call her merely a “prostitute” is to flatten her into stereotype; she was something more dangerous, more ambitious: a woman who wielded vice as power. From Quiet Kent to London’s Underbelly…

If you’ve ever navigated the automotive chaos of the North Circular Road (A406) in London, you might not expect to find a serene waterway serenely floating above the traffic. Yet, that’s exactly wh…

Toxic mass chiselled out of Feltham pipes amid campaign to help stop people tipping harmful substances down drains A team of water engineers have spent a month blasting and chiselling a 100-tonne fatberg loose from under the streets of west London. The blockage consisting mainly of wet wipes glued together by congealed fat, oil and grease, was the equivalent in mass of eight doubledecker buses, stuck 10 metres below street level. Continue reading...

On a languid bend of the River Thames, nestled somewhere between Shepperton and Weybridge, lies a place that sounds like it belongs in a mummy’s memoir or a Bond villain’s holiday brochure:&n…

Once the preserve of powdered wigs and whispered diplomacy, Grosvenor Square is now where memory, money, and manicured hedges jostle for elbow room. Located in the heart of Mayfair, this iconic London square has reinvented itself more times than Madonna—and somehow still manages to look good in Georgian. From Fields to Facades Back in the 1720s, Grosvenor Square was nothing more than a pastoral blank canvas.

Walk long enough through the City of London and you’ll pass ghosts disguised as office blocks. Beneath the glass and granite of the Old Bailey once stood Newgate Prison — a place so cruel it could curdle the Thames. Here, justice was a spectacle, faith a currency, and the air thick with the breath of the condemned. Every brick seemed to whisper a question London still can’t quite answer: who deserves punishment, and who simply can’t pay to avoid it?

London is a city of layers, each one stitched with the stories of the people who settled here. Among the most enduring threads are the Greeks, who over centuries have built churches, opened cafés, launched businesses, and raised families—transforming pockets of the city into living archives of Aegean memory. From Byzantine ships to Soho streets The Greeks arrived in London earlier than many realise.

London loves its eccentrics. We carve them into blue plaques, mutter their names in pub stories, and stitch them into the long, messy quilt of the city’s history. Some are kings and reformers; others are bawds and tricksters. Among the latter, few shine brighter—or stranger—than Priss (or Priscilla) Fotheringham, the Restoration sex worker whose “chucking” act made her both infamous and unforgettable.

Step off the busy arteries of the City and you’ll find it: a ruin that isn’t quite a ruin, a church that isn’t quite a church, and a garden that feels like a secret only London could keep. St Dunstan in the East is the kind of place you don’t stumble upon accidentally — you discover it, like treasure, whispered down the generations of city wanderers.

Step off the busy arteries of the City and you’ll find it: a ruin that isn’t quite a ruin, a church that isn’t quite a church, and a garden that feels like a secret only London could keep. St Dunstan in the East is the kind of place you don’t stumble upon accidentally — you discover it, like treasure, whispered down the generations of city wanderers.

There is a certain romance to a good tyre. Not the dull black rubber loops we take for granted, but the idea of them: speed, endurance, the promise of the open road. And if ever a building could capture that sense of adventure, it is London’s Michelin House. Perched on the corner of Fulham Road and Sloane Avenue, the Michelin Building is, quite simply, a marvel.

London likes to think of itself as endlessly modern and progressive, but in 1913, the idea of a Black man becoming a borough mayor sent monocles popping into teacups across the city. That man was John Richard Archer, a Liverpudlian photographer, radical councillor and reluctant trailblazer who became Mayor of Battersea—making him the first Black man to hold senior public office in London.

The trains also provide passengers with real-time travel updates and walk-through carriages for staff and inspectors

Londoners live on layers. Tube tunnels snake under Georgian sewers under Tudor vaults under Roman roads. But there is one layer, charred and defiant, that marks the city’s first recorded apocalypse: the Boudican Destruction Horizon. Dig down beneath modern pavements — beneath Pret a Manger, beneath the glass towers of the Square Mile — and archaeologists still hit a stratum of blackened soil and ash.

Step out of Russell Square station and the Kimpton Fitzroy doesn’t so much appear as announce itself: a full city block of thé-au-lait terracotta, turrets and swagger, like a French château that took a wrong turn at Calais and decided London would do nicely. This Grade II* listed grand dame has been many things since 1900 — a byword for Victorian excess, a wartime survivor, a conference haunt, a 21st-century reboot — but never, ever shy.

Londoners live on layers. Tube tunnels snake under Georgian sewers under Tudor vaults under Roman roads. But there is one layer, charred and defiant, that marks the city’s first recorded apocalypse: the Boudican Destruction Horizon. Dig down beneath modern pavements — beneath Pret a Manger, beneath the glass towers of the Square Mile — and archaeologists still hit a stratum of blackened soil and ash.

Spitalfields is not a market. It is a séance. A street-corner time machine. A place where London’s past doesn’t so much linger as lurch into the present wearing vintage boots and trying to sell you a handmade soap that smells of gin. At once glitzy and grimy, sacred and saccharine, the market is a delirious remix of everything London does best—history, hustle, and a dash of outright performance art.

London loves its eccentrics. We carve them into blue plaques, mutter their names in pub stories, and stitch them into the long, messy quilt of the city’s history. Some are kings and reformers; others are bawds and tricksters. Among the latter, few shine brighter—or stranger—than Priss (or Priscilla) Fotheringham, the Restoration sex worker whose “chucking” act made her both infamous and unforgettable.

Every summer, London throws itself into a ritual that’s equal parts poetry, sweat, dumplings, and dragon heads. The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival—or Duanwu Jie—has migrated thousands of miles from its riverside origins in ancient China to the choppy waters of London’s Royal Docks, and it’s become one of the city’s most vivid cultural mash-ups. The Legend Beneath the Paddles…

London has always had its strange monarchies. You’ve got the official one, with its balcony waves and curtsies rehearsed in the mirror. Then there are the unofficial royals: the Pearly Kings and Queens, a dynasty born not of castles and coronations but of charity, grit, and buttons that glint like fish scales under East End lamplight. They are living folk art, a reminder that working-class London has always crowned its own sovereigns—and dressed them to outshine Mayfair.

London has always had its strange monarchies. You’ve got the official one, with its balcony waves and curtsies rehearsed in the mirror. Then there are the unofficial royals: the Pearly Kings and Queens, a dynasty born not of castles and coronations but of charity, grit, and buttons that glint like fish scales under East End lamplight. They are living folk art, a reminder that working-class London has always crowned its own sovereigns—and dressed them to outshine Mayfair.